


For Want Of A King

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Complicated Relationships, Eventual Romance, M/M, Magic Revealed, Power Dynamics, Royalty, Season/Series 02, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-22 23:21:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16607351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: After his defeat of Nimueh, Merlin isn't as cautious as he should be, and Arthur learns of his magic.Taking mercy, Arthur casts him not into the dungeons, but out of the castle, and Merlin devotes himself to his place as Gaius' apprentice. With the truth a silent wall between them, Merlin and Arthur are each forced to re-evaluate their places in the world.





	1. Chapter 1

In the aftermath of Nimueh, it happens.

Merlin is joyous as he and Gaius return to Camelot, both of them on horseback, and although it weighs on him, somewhat, to have killed Nimueh and done it so easily... It isn’t that he feels guilty, because he doesn’t, and he doesn’t think he ever could feel guilty for it, just like he couldn’t feel guilty for killing a monster about to kill somebody, or killing a bandit or a thief that’d kill Arthur. 

It’s just that—

It was so  _easy_. 

He’d felt so determined when he’d risen up from the ground, his own charred skin and the burn of his tunic filling his nostrils, the wound she’d left when she’d thrown his power back at him eating at his sternum, and it had come to him in the flash of understanding, of inspiration, that magic so often does.

 _You are a creature of magic_ , some unseen voice reminds him, in a voice that isn’t a voice: it whispers across his mind and it tastes of truth, and he wonders what it means, to be a creature of magic, like the Dragon... The Dragon, who was willing to let his mother die, and not care, and the Dragon, who he’ll never let go,  _never_. If he’s a creature of magic, does that make him like the Dragon? Monstrous? 

The lightning hadn’t just charred Nimueh’s skin or burned her: it had calcified her into something almost like stone, and when she’d burst outward in a cloud of ash and chips of grit, he’d felt nothing but satisfaction.

“Gaius,” Merlin says quietly, as the outer walls of Camelot come into view on the crest of the horizon. “Do you think it’s—” He trails off, and he thinks for a second about what Gwen had said about killing Uther.  _It would be murder_ ,she’d said, even hating him, even after he’d killed her father, and Nimueh had killed a lot of people, but hasn’t Uther, too? “Do you think it’s murder, what I just did?”

“Why?” Gaius asks. “Do you feel guilty?”

“No,” Merlin says. “But if it is murder, and I don’t feel guilty, I think that’s probably worse. Don’t you?” Gaius thinks for a few moments, his jaw set and his expression thoughtful as he looks out at the path before them. When he speaks, it’s delicately and with a very careful tone. 

“I don’t think it’s murder, no,” he murmurs, and he exhales before he continues, “You know, Merlin, sometimes we must see those die, who would do us harm, who would do others harm.”

“But not Uther,” Merlin says, with the slightest bitterness he can’t quite hold back.

“Arthur,” Gaius begins in a low-suffering tone, and Merlin nods his head.

“Yeah, I know, I— I heard you, before. He’s not ready to be king.” Merlin shifts his grip slightly on the reins, and he feels a strange feeling thick in his chest. He’s excited to get back home, to see his mother healed and safe in her bed, and he’s excited to be back in Camelot, but not to go back into the castle. Not that he doesn’t want to work - he’s willing to work. Not that he doesn’t want to be back within the safety of the castle walls, but... Their destinies are entwined together. “I wish I could tell him what just happened. That I saved him, that... Sometimes, I feel like he looks right through me.”

“You’re his friend,” Gaius says softly. “He cares for you, and he appreciates your loyalty.”

“He appreciates a servant that won’t leave no matter how badly he treats him,” Merlin mutters. 

“Too good for being a servant now, are you?” Gaius asks, and Merlin sighs, running a hand through his hair and leaning back on the horse, shifting his position slightly. “No, I know that that’s not it. But, Merlin, to tell him what you are... You would doom yourself. I would not see you executed for the sake of your pride.”

“No,” Merlin mutters. “Nor would I.” When they arrive at the gates of Camelot, it is Merlin that takes the horses to the stable, telling Gaius to walk up to the castle to check on his mother first, and when Merlin comes home, he all but dives into her arms. Every pustule has come away from her skin, and she’s tired and pale, but well. 

Merlin falls asleep with his head in her lap and her hands in his hair, and when he wakes up, he entertains her with a swirl of glistening magic that hovers on the air. 

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

It leaves him distracted, holed up with his mother and with Gaius: sitting on the edge of the bed, his legs crossed, he shows off his magic for her like he used to do, when he was only young. Coaxing up embers from the fire, he sets them to dance on the air, and he conjures a dragon that flies on the air and then dives down to devour a sheep made of the same light; he makes a princess and a suitor that dance on the air; he makes a boat that sails on rolling waves, and then bursts into stars.

Gaius smiles at him, praises him on the delicacy of his form, and there’s so much sadness in his eyes - Merlin almost imagines him saying it, although Gaius doesn’t dare actually  _voice_  it. “ _I wish you could do that for Arthur_ ,” the look in his eyes says. “ _I wish everyone could see you do that.”_

And even though Gaius doesn’t say it, he’s bold and thoughtless and  _stupid_  in the next few days, out riding with Arthur, when he’s hunting in the forest. Merlin’s never understood hunting, and in the aftermath of what happened with the unicorn, he understands it even less, killing some defenceless creature just because you can. He doesn’t understand how a man can be so cruel, or  _want_  to lean into pointless killing. 

Merlin doesn’t think about it, and it’s stupid, he’s stupid, but he has to act fast. It’s a break in the rock that does it: as the knights are all camped around the fire, and Arthur is walking with Merlin as he looks for rosemary in the undergrowth. 

It’s just one man. 

He catches Arthur by surprise, knocks him over the head - he doesn’t see Merlin because Merlin is crouched on his knees, and Merlin doesn’t  _think_ , doesn’t wait to see if Arthur is really unconscious. 

“ _Move_ ,” he whispers in the old tongue, and he wields Arthur’s sword with as much ease as anything, brings the hilt of it down  _hard_  on the guy’s head, to knock him out... He topples like a sack of bricks, and Merlin calls, “Knights! Knights! Here!”

And sees too late that Arthur is wide awake, his elbows back in the dirt, his eyes focused on Merlin.

Merlin’s blood runs cold, but the knights come, and Arthur doesn’t say a word. Merlin looks at the bruise on the back of his head, and Arthur doesn’t say anything to him or the knights - he doesn’t talk at all. Arthur doesn’t say a word to anybody until they come back toward the castle.

Merlin studies his face, feels the real and genuine fear in his chest as they ascend the stairs and come into Arthur’s quarters, and he puts Arthur’s riding clothes away, sets his bag on the shelf. It’s started to rain outside - started just as they came into the castle - and Merlin looks at Arthur’s reflection in the pane of the water-streaked window, at Arthur’s stiff-lipped expression.

He expects him to break the silence as soon as the door is closed behind them, but he doesn’t. The silence goes on and on, swelling like the ocean before a wave, until Merlin says, “Do you want me to fetch your dinner, sire?”

It’s the first words he speaks to Arthur, the first he dares to say: with the silence broken, Arthur looks at Merlin, his blue eyes dark and shining with some deep, new incomprehension.

“How many times have you saved my life?” he asks, soberly.

“Once or twice,” Merlin says, very slowly. 

“Not the times I know about,” Arthur says immediately, his voice sharp and abruptly biting. “Not— Not those times. How many times, Merlin, have you saved my life? The real number, the true number.”

“I don’t know what you mean, sire,” Merlin says, feeling his voice falter, and Arthur slams his palm down so hard against the table top that the whole thing rattles, two of the candle holders shaking in their place, and a metal mug falling to the ground. 

The clatter echoes in the quiet of the room. 

“Don’t lie to me,” Arthur says, his voice thick, and he looks like he might burst into tears, his cheeks red, his eyes shining even more. “Don’t you dare.  _Tell me_. Because that— That wasn’t the first time, I know that that wasn’t... That can’t have been the first time. How many times have you done that, when I haven’t seen it coming?”

Merlin looks down at his boots. 

How many times has he waited for this moment, and prayed it would come? How many times has he wished, desperately, that it would come out all of a sudden, and Arthur would get it, and Arthur would forgive him, and everything would be fine, how many times...?

This isn’t like it’s been in his daydreams.

Arthur is staring at him, with so much horror on his face, so much desperation, and Merlin cannot stand it. 

“That’s why I came to Camelot,” Merlin says softly, his voice barely more of a whisper: his voice is thick too, and he feels like  _he_  might start crying. He’s just so tired, and so desperate, and so terrified he can feel his heart beating in the back of his throat. “You asked me, in Ealdor, why I came to Camelot, and that is why, Arthur, because I have magic.”

“Why Camelot?” Arthur asks, his voice harsh and barely under control. “Why come here, and not go somewhere else?”

“My mother thought a city would be better for me, than the village. She thought maybe I could find someone else like me, and I...” He thinks of Gaius, and his mouth is dry. “I haven’t found anyone. It’s... But it’s part of me, you know. I don’t hurt anyone, Arthur, I’ve never hurt anyone except to protect you, to protect anyone—”

Arthur is breathing heavily, looking not at Merlin, but instead into the middle distance, and Merlin takes a step forward, saying, “Arthur, I know that your father says that magic is...”

“When I was sick,” Arthur whispers. “Just— Just days ago, I was in a coma, and all of you thought that I would die, that it was inevitable... Did you do something? Did you— Was it magic, that helped me?”

“Magic has helped you so many times,” Merlin says, looking at him with his hands clenched at his sides. “So many times, Arthur, I’ve helped you, and...” He’s rehearsed it in his head, how he’d say it if Arthur ever found out. 

 _Our destinies are entwined_ , one speech begins, before it trails off into oblivion.  _I was told of a prophecy, and it mentioned me and you_ , starts another, and then the words run out.  _I would give my life for you, Arthur, readily and willingly, and according to this big old dragon under the castle,_  begins another, and that one is... probably the worst. “And I’d never hurt you. I’d never hurt anyone. Remember Anahora, and the unicorns, the qu— the tasks, that you had to complete? I would have died for you, you know that I would have. And I know that you are kind, and noble, and that you show  _mercy_ , and what you have to understand is that magic—”

“You’re right,” Arthur says. There’s heavy emotion in his voice, but also a stiffness, an iron-hard composure, that hadn’t been there before. “I am merciful.”

Merlin feels himself sag in relief. 

“I’ll explain from the beginning,” Merlin says, but Arthur holds up his hand.

“From this moment forward, you are relieved of your duties as my servant,” Arthur says. “Your last wages will be given to you as normal at the end of the week, and I will inform the steward that you wish to focus on your duties as Gaius’ apprentice.”

Merlin stands very still, his lips parted, and he stares at Arthur, his eyes wide. His blood isn’t cold, now - it feels like it’s not even moving in his veins, and he can barely feel his heart beating, can barely stand to breathe.

“And if I ever hear,” Arthur says, “from anybody, that you’ve used magic in public, or to hurt someone... I will have you executed, like so many sorcerers before you.” 

“Arthur,” Merlin says, and Arthur bows his head to keep from meeting Merlin’s gaze. 

“Get out,” Arthur says, and Merlin heaves in a breath, and he  _runs_. He doesn’t remember, later on, actually passing by the different corridors in the castle or leaving out toward Gaius’ cottage - all he remembers is the pound of his feet on stone and then on the wet ground outside, the soak of the rain in his hair and his clothes, the way Gaius puts his arms awkwardly around Merlin’s body when Merlin lets himself  _sob_ , and wishes that his mother had stayed one more day instead of going back to Ealdor yesterday, because he wants her here,  _wants_  her—

“What happened?” Gaius says, but Merlin is insensible, can only sob and feel like a child for crying, like he’s just a little boy, and it’s so stupid,  _so stupid_ , and it’s his fault for not being more careful and not thinking—

“He saw me,” Merlin chokes out. “He saw me... And he let me go.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Gaius whispers, and Merlin cries until he can’t cry anymore.

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

“Teach me more anatomy,” Merlin says the next morning, when he has risen from dark dreams and ill-gotten sleep, and Gaius glances up from the book he is reading, staring at him. Merlin stands in the doorway, and he knows from the look of his reflection in his wash basin that his eyes are red-rimmed and with heavy, grey-purple bags underneath him; his lips are chapped; he’s pale. 

“You should rest,” Gaius says quietly.

“I’ve rested enough,” Merlin says, and he sits down heavily at the bench across from Gaius, rubbing hard at his eyes. “Teach me.” He can see the reluctance and the uncertainty in the old man’s face, see his hesitation, but then he slowly sets the book aside, nods his head, and he goes for his books on anatomy.

The lesson is long, and hard, and boring, and Merlin is grateful for every second of it.

It distracts him from thinking, from panicking about whether Arthur will change his mind and turn him in, from wondering if Arthur will ever speak to him again, even worrying about how he will fill his destiny, if Arthur will never speak to him again.

When Gaius finishes the lesson, he reads through the chapters they’d gone over again and again, drilling them into his head, and when Gaius makes his rounds of the city, he goes with him, passing him the right things from his box of supplies, comforting family members as Gaius treats his patients.

“You’re not angry?” Gaius asks as they come back into the house, when the sun is beginning to sink down below the horizon, and Merlin begins to eat stew on the fire. “To have lost your work in the castle?” Merlin shrugs his shoulders, looking down at the pan instead of turning back to look at Gaius.

“No,” Merlin says. “It wasn’t that much money anyway, and I barely ever bought anything with it, except books, now and then.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Gaius says.

“I know,” Merlin replies. He hears Gaius sigh softly, but he doesn’t argue with him, doesn’t ask any more questions, and Merlin spends the evening, after they’ve eaten, practising spells in the quiet of his bedroom. He has always practised nightly – this is no different.

( _Except that it is different, isn’t it?_

_Because usually, he wouldn’t have quite so much time to practise – he would be polishing Arthur’s shoes, and setting up his clothes for the next morning, and dousing the candle as he left Arthur to sleep in his bed. And Arthur would sleep so soundly on his comfortable mattress, on his soft pillow, the handsome planes of his face neatly shadowed by the moonlight from the window, and sometimes, Merlin would hover for a second as he finished up his work in Arthur’s quarters, and watch him sleep, before he came home to study.)_

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

 ** _Merlin_**.

The voice wakes him in the dead of night, and Merlin sits up straight, hearing the voice echo through his rib cage and on the inside of his skull, ringing through him like the peal of a bell he’s standing too close to. He knows that voice, knows its rich and sonorous tone, and the way it echoes whether he hears it in his mind or in his ears.

**_Merlin. Merlin!_ **

_No_ , Merlin replies, forcing his voice to radiate outward from his chest with a burst of magic. _No_.

 ** _Merlin!_** the Dragon calls in his mind, and Merlin rolls over, wrapping the pillow tightly around his head and pressing it against his ears, but it makes no difference at all. The words are coming into his head, after all, not coming into his ears.

He is up the whole night, and an hour before dawn, he finally relents, standing up from his bed and moving sleep-deprived through the hall beneath the castle, a torch in his hand as he rapidly descends the stairs. He stumbles when he comes into the great caverns beneath Camelot, and he sends a stone whistling down into the depths.

“You are unsteady on your feet, young warlock.”

“Well, that happens to humans when you don’t let us sleep,” Merlin snaps, rubbing his hand hard at his eye. “I told you. I’m not interested in your advice anymore, or your help – you don’t care about me, you just care about my magic.”

“You practised your spells for so long tonight,” the Dragon says, his voice quiet, and sly. “For many hours…”

“Arthur found out I’m a sorcerer,” Merlin says. “He won’t speak to me. Are you happy now?” The Dragon leans forward, and Merlin breathes in as he comes in close enough that Merlin can see the reflection of his face in one of his big, yellow eyes, close enough that he can feel the heat that radiates from his snout and from the hard scales on his nose and jaw.

“It was foretold,” the Dragon says smugly. “All is well.”

Merlin can’t help the desperate thrum of hope that vibrates in his chest, and he looks the Dragon in the eye, his lips parted. He’s breathing heavily, and his heart is beating a little bit faster in his chest.

“What do you mean?” Merlin asks, slowly.

“It was foretold,” the Dragon repeats, leaning back. “This is as it should be.”

“You mean he’ll forgive me?” Merlin asks, his voice coming out rapid and quick and clumsy from his mouth. “You mean that he’ll let me back into the—”

“You are no servant, boy,” the Dragon says, in a tone of satisfaction. “This was inevitable, and will bode well for your education.”

“I told you I’d never let you go,” Merlin says.

“You will,” the Dragon decides. Merlin opens his mouth to reply, to say that he won’t, not ever, but the dragon spreads out his wings and gives one mighty beat of them, the wind off them punching Merlin back from his place at the edge of the outcrop of stone and blowing out his torch, leaving him in the darkness, flat on his arse.

The Dragon flies into the depths of the cavern, his chains clinking as he moves, and Merlin crawls up the stairs.

“ _Please don’t wake me,”_ he writes on a piece of parchment that he pins to his door. “ _Couldn’t sleep last night_.”

Gaius lets him sleep until noon.

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

“Where is Gaius?” Uther asks as Merlin hands over the medicine for the old wound in his shoulder. He doesn’t look at Merlin as he speaks, and instead he focuses on the bottle in his hand, reading the neatly printed label Gaius had written on it.

“I’m sorry, sire,” Merlin says, “he’s outside of Camelot at the moment – he had to ride out to Gort, to the East? Their alderman is very sick, and since he’s the village physician, there was no one else to help.” Uther nods his head, and he sets the bottle neatly on the table beside him. His hands behind his back, Merlin takes a neat step back from the king, and his skin feels too tight with fear, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He knows that if Uther knew, if Arthur had told him, that he already would have said something, that he would have had Merlin shackled in irons and burned at the stake or whatever, but still the fear lingers and bubbles under his skin.

“Arthur says you’ve taken your leave of your service to him,” Uther says, conversationally.

“I’m grateful for Arthur’s employment, your majesty, but— It was a lot to juggle, both his work and what Gaius gives me, and… Without meaning to, um, to imply that working for Arthur isn’t important, sire, I thought I would serve the court better if I was putting in my earnest as Gaius’ apprentice.” Uther raises his head, and he looks at Merlin for the longest few seconds – he never usually talks to Merlin if he can help it, and the scant words he says are usually short demands or insults, but now… Merlin doesn’t know if he imagines it, but he does think that Uther is looking at him differently, his chin a little bit higher as he examines Merlin, more respect, maybe, in his face.

“Serving boys are not hard to find,” Uther says, “but a skilled physician is priceless. I have told the steward that I will be augmenting Gaius’ wage in accordance with a full-time apprentice on his hands. You shall have the allowance you had whilst on the castle staff.” He almost throws the words out, and Merlin gets the feeling that he doesn’t even care, that it barely gives him pause to put money in Merlin’s coffers even though he isn’t serving the prince anymore.

“Thank you, your majesty,” Merlin says, giving a neat bow of his head and bending his knee slightly.

Is that all it took, to gain the respect of the king, from the beginning?

“Mmm,” Uther hums uncaringly, waving his hand, and Merlin walks swiftly from the hall. As he walks into the corridor outside, he nearly walks into Arthur, and he stands very still for a moment. Arthur meets his gaze.

“What were you doing in the throne hall?” Arthur demands. For a moment, Merlin keeps his gaze entirely neutral, fixing his stare on Arthur’s and challenging him to look away, his lips pressed together.

“I was giving the king his prescription from Gaius, your highness,” Merlin says crisply, arching one eyebrow in sardonic expectation. “For the injury in his shoulder. Gaius is abroad in Gort, some day’s ride away.”

“Oh,” Arthur says, leaning back on his heels slightly, and for a moment he opens his mouth, as if he’s about to say something, but then he closes it, and he puts his head down. “Right,” he says, and he walks past Merlin, into the throne room.

 _All will be well_ , the Dragon had said. _This is as it should be_.

Merlin makes his way back to Gaius’ cottage, and he puts himself to bed.


	2. Chapter 2

Merlin sits very still on the other side of the bench, and he watches very carefully as Gaius takes up each ingredient in the salve, setting them bit by bit into the mortar and pestle and grinding the result into a thick, strange-smelling paste. In the aftermath of returning from Gort, Gaius has slept for a good while, and Merlin had taken the time to occupy himself with cleaning up the main part of the cottage, as silent as possible as Gaius had slept it off, but honestly… Gaius had slept like the dead.

It’s stupid, that his attitude to learning from Gaius has turned around so rapidly, but there’s so little to _do_ – he’s so used to juggling five jobs at once that only having half of the opportunities to occupy himself is grating on him, and he can barely stand the _ennui_ of everything.

But—

It has been nice, to get as much sleep as he’s had recently.

He’s well-rested in the morning, and he has so much _energy_ , and he just feels _great_.

“What’s in this?” Gaius asks, the question a plain test, and Merlin points individually at each bottle and jar as he lists off the ingredients.

“Helenium,” he says, pointing at a tall, thin bottle of yellow petals. “Gwen calls it sneezeweed. That’s radish, that’s leek, and that’s bishopwort… That’s garlic, obviously, and then that flower, the purple stuff… Is that hyacinth?”

“It isn’t always purple,” Gaius says in a quiet, reasonable tone. “Sometimes it can be pink, or white.”

“All the flowers look the same,” Merlin says, and Gaius laughs.

“No, they don’t,” he replies, his voice ringing with quiet amusement. Offering the bottle to Merlin, he tilts a few of the petals into his palm, and Merlin brings them to his face, inhaling deeply. There’s a sweet smell to it, but it isn’t one that he recognizes, and he glances up to Gaius for help. “This is called holewort, or hollow leek,” he says, and Merlin tips the petals back into the bottle. “What would you guess this is for?”

“It’s not finished,” Merlin says. “You’ve got to boil it in that pot – it’s the wrong colour, it’s going to go red. You’ve added red nettles to that before, and another flower, I don’t know what. It’s an ointment, right? You give this to Adrian the cobbler, for his arthritis, I know that.”

“It’s for relieving aches and pains in the joints,” Gaius confirms, and there’s a slight quirk to his lips as he looks at Merlin, like he’s laughing at some joke Merlin hasn’t heard.

“What?” he asks, and Gaius just shakes his head, grinding the rest of the stuff in the bowl to a thick paste and then setting it over some butter in a small tray, adding in the red nettles, and then the flowers as well. Celandine, he remembers, but it honestly doesn’t look all that different to buttercups when it rests in the bottle.

“You know more than you think,” Gaius murmurs warmly. “Merlin, I know you find these lessons dull, but you have the makings of a great physician in you.”

“They’re not that dull,” Merlin says, leaning back slightly in his stool, and he exhales quietly. “I’ve been ungrateful, that’s all. And I haven’t paid attention.” The guilt is fleeting, curling in the base of his stomach and then fading away as he thinks about Arthur instead, thinks about how he’s been spread between his duties as Arthur’s servant, and as Gaius’ apprentice…

“I’ve been thinking,” Gaius murmurs quietly. “You have so much time on your hands, what with the halving of your duties, and I thought that perhaps you might take tutelage, to…” Gaius trails off, and then he says, “I would like it, if you were able to travel the kingdom on your own.”

The idea lights a spark inside him, and he almost jumps up from the table, he’s so abruptly excited. Travelling the kingdom, like he has with Arthur, but on his _own_ , being able to gather herbs but being able to move around, being able to go out and ride out to wherever, meet different people… Learn magic.

What if he could seek out the druids?

So long as he only stopped for a few days in between visiting one village or another, he could become a real friend of the druids, could learn magic from them, and wouldn’t that be something? Suddenly, the walls of Camelot’s castle feel too tight and too small, and to be set loose in the kingdom at large, without having to worry about looking after Arthur or avoiding the knights, or…

“What’s stopping me?” Merlin asks, glancing up and trying to wrap his head around what exactly Gaius means, but Gaius gives him a small smile, reaching over the table and cupping the side of his cheek. Gaius’ hands are always a little cold, and his palm and fingertips are rough to the touch, but the movement makes Merlin feel warm inside, and it reminds him of home, with his mother. Gaius is like a father to him, in so many ways, and Merlin is so grateful he doesn’t think he could ever put it into words.

“Well, you can’t defend yourself,” Gaius says, and Merlin sardonically raises his eyebrows.

“Uh, Gaius—”

“No, _no_ ,” Gaius says sternly, swilling the contents of the bowl and then turning to set it over a low-burning fire. “No, Merlin, you need some understandable reasoning, some explanation, for the knights.”

“Why?” Merlin asks. “I mean— If you’re talking about me travelling to other villages, then who will know?”

“And when I say you’ve been gone for several weeks, travelling to different villages, and one of the guards asks how I could send a defenceless young man with no fighting capability to travel the pathways of Camelot alone, Merlin, what should I say?” Merlin hesitates, feeling himself frown and feeling his brow furrow, and he looks down at the wood grain of the table. Stupid of him, to think he’d be able to move out into the kingdom, thinking he’d be able to— “Which is why I’ve arranged for Sir Leon to train you five days a week in the use of knives and daggers.”

`Merlin looks up from the tabletop, his mouth falling open, and Gaius beams at him.

“Really? But— But that must be expensive, right?”

“Not at all,” Gaius says, shaking his head. “I’ve helped Sir Leon a great many times with one thing or another, ever since he first came to Camelot. He was very eager to repay me by passing on some of his skills to my apprentice, and as you know, he’s a very good man.” Merlin thinks on it for a moment or two, considers the tall form of Leon and the blunt but well-meaning way he talks—

“Really?” Merlin asks. “Really, he— Thank you. Thank you, Gaius.”

“Mmm, well, there’s not really time for thanking me, is there? You’re going to be late.” For half a second, Merlin is frozen staring at the other man’s slight smirk, and then Merlin laughs as he jumps up from the bench, running to grab for his cloak and his boots. Gaius’ laughter follows him out into the street.

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

 Sir Leon is smiling when Merlin comes out to the training ground, and he puts out his right hand to shake Merlin’s, letting Merlin feel the cool metal of the gauntlet. Across the training ground, he can hear the clank and sparking sound of swords and maces on shields as the other knights practise, but Leon stands aside.

“Thanks for this, Leon,” Merlin says earnestly, and he all but bounces on his heels as Leon looks at him with a critical eye.

“It’s no problem,” Leon says warmly, and he puts his hands on his hips, a grin on his face. “How is life outside the castle treating you?”

“Pretty well,” Merlin says good-naturedly, and he doesn’t let his cheerful expression falter as he thinks of Arthur telling him to go, Arthur not looking at him, Arthur _hating_ him because he’s magic… “I’m getting sleep I never did before.” Leon laughs, clapping him on the shoulder, and then he moves over to the wooden bench at the side of the grassy circle, taking up a light dagger and holding it out to him by the hilt, the blade in his hand.

“You’ve done some swordplay with us before, I know that,” Leon says as Merlin takes up the blade and runs his thumb over the polished sheen of the pommel, and he feels the weight of the tempered steel in his hand. “But unless you’re going to put on a little more bulk and muscle to wear heavier armour, you’re probably better of making use of those fleet feet – you know, a dagger is very good, or other smaller blades… Have you ever thought about a staff?”

“A staff?” Merlin repeats, and he thinks of the sidhe staff he’d had from the two sidhe that had come to Camelot, and the way he’d felt the weight of it in his hands… When he’d fought against Tauren, some months back, he hadn’t been able to carry it back into Camelot on the night, and he’d buried it out by the lake, safely out of the way. He likes using the staff, that much is sure, and he has to wonder if he’d feel the same way about a non-magical one, if it would have the same sprightly comfort in his palms… “I don’t know,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “Aren’t they awkward to carry around?”

“Not at all!” Leon says. “Especially as a lone traveller, if that’s Gaius’ thought for you – staves are good to carry on the back, and you could use it as a walking stick while you were moving long distances without a horse! Besides, physicians often have a staff to hand – do you remember the Lady Sophia and her father, when they were here, ooh, I don’t know, maybe a year ago? The two of them had staves!” Merlin arches his eyebrows, his lips forming an awkward pinch, and he thinks of the way “the Lady Sophia” had burst into fragments of paper-like burnt flesh, exploding outward, as Merlin had turned her own staff on her.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, a little bit awkwardly. “I remember. So, where do I start with this dagger, then?”

Merlin _has_ had a little sword training, but it’s mostly been learning by watching the knights at work – he’s listened when they give each other notes about foot work or stance, and he’s watched carefully as they’ve practised drills head to head. His own practice has pretty much all been out in camps in the field, when the guys were bored and chose to spend a free half hour showing Merlin how to use a sword – this was ordinarily done by committee, with about six of them criticizing him at once, but Merlin has always kind of enjoyed it. The natural ribaldry and fraternity the knights have together reminds him of running around with the other boys back in Ealdor, when he was only a child, and he feels glad to be included in it, even if it’s just as Arthur’s servant.

Well. To _have_ been included in it, anyway.

The dagger is different.

The way he fights is different – he has to get a lot closer to actually _land_ any kind of hit, and even then, he isn’t supposed to be slashing in the same way. He’s meant to get in close and just go for the main arteries or the weak spots in the armour, and Merlin is vaguely aware that if he actually gets _good_ at this, if he starts fighting with a dagger, it mostly won’t be a matter of maiming the other party or knocking him out.

It’ll be lethal.

After his two hours of allotted training are over, Merlin is sweaty and a little exhausted, but he can’t quite shake the smile on his face, and he grins to himself as he looks to Leon. He’s outlining a few exercises for Merlin to do, just to put a little more muscle on his legs and his arms, and it will take a few months, he knows that, but…

“Thanks, Leon,” Merlin murmurs. “Genuinely, for this.” Leon reaches out, and he ruffles Merlin’s hair affectionately, making him smile. Even as Merlin steps away, however, the other knights break for their lunches, and he stands beside Leon as they come in toward him – a few of them grin to see the blade in his hand, and a few of them chuck his chin or push him on the side of the head, brushing shoulders with him as they move toward the dining hall.

Bringing up the rear, Arthur pauses, and he glances at the dagger in Merlin’s hand, and Leon standing beside him.

“What’s this, then?” he asks, a vision of uncertainty, and Merlin turns away, setting the dagger down on the table.

“Master Gaius asked me to train him in short blades, sire,” Leon says slowly – he is surprised, Merlin would guess, that Arthur wasn’t already aware of the training, and Merlin turns around, glancing between the both of them before he joins the conversation.

“So I can travel on my own,” he says, and he smiles at Arthur, but the smile feels slightly forced on his own face as he tries to tease, teetering slightly forward on his toes. “Get me out of Camelot.”

“Where will you travel?” Arthur demands immediately, taking a step closer to Merlin and looking abruptly stricken, his lip pulled back from his teeth. Merlin cannot tell what to make of that expression, whether it’s anger or indignation or what, but it makes him step back, reversing the step Arthur had taken forward, so that their stances mirror one another.

“To the outlying villages, to other places in Camelot,” Merlin says quietly, his shoulders back, his chin tipped slightly backward.

“So you can learn more… healing,” Arthur says. The hesitation only lasts for a second, and although Leon doesn’t seem to notice it, Merlin certainly does. Arthur looks Merlin up and down, and then says, rather sharply, “Would you walk with me, Merlin? I’m still looking for another manservant, and I just need someone to help me off with my armour.”

“Aren’t you breaking for lunch?” Merlin asks, and Arthur fixes him with such a dark look that his blue eyes look stormy, and Merlin falters. “Yes, sire, can do.” He follows Arthur up into the castle, his metal boots making a quiet _clank_ as they hit each stone step as they ascend, and Merlin follows after him, wondering— He doesn’t want to do this in one of the tents, Merlin supposes, and wants the privacy of his chambers, but…

The door clicks shut behind them, and Arthur leans past Merlin, fixing the latch on the door so that it can’t be opened from the outside, but he doesn’t move away: he keeps one arm bracketing Merlin’s neck, and then brings the other one to Merlin’s other shoulder, so that he’s pinned right back against the door, Arthur’s face only inches away from his. Merlin has never been this close to Arthur, not like this: he’s never been so aware of the scent of the oil that shines his armours, or the lavender soap that clings to his hair and his skin, nor of the scent of Arthur’s sweat after training. It’s not—

It’s not a terrible smell, truth be told.

Not that Merlin has ever especially sought out men, not that he— Merlin feels his mouth dry slightly, just at the thought of it. He likes women, and that’s the important thing – he likes women, and men are something else, men are _men_ , men smell like Arthur does right now, and Merlin—

Merlin doesn’t like it at all.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Arthur demands, a quiet fury weighing down his words, and Merlin breathes in a shaky breath, staring into his eyes and not knowing what to do, what to say.

“No,” he says.

“Are you planning on leaving, I asked, so that you can learn more magic?”

“Would you rather I stay in Camelot,” Merlin asks softly, “and learn more magic here?” Arthur slams his palm down against the wood beside Merlin’s head, making the wood rattle in its frame, and Merlin’s breath hitches in his throat at the obscene volume of the metal clank, flinching back and slightly away from Arthur.

“I don’t want you to do _any_!” Arthur hisses. “It’s forbidden!”

“I’ve never harmed anybody, except to defend you,” Merlin says. “I have used my magic to heal, and to help, and—”

“You could be executed,” Arthur snaps, and Merlin laughs.

“Is that the only problem, then?” he asks. “That I could be executed, if I was caught?” Arthur hesitates for a long second, his lips parted, and then he takes a step back from Arthur, running his still-gauntleted hand through his hair and staring, conflicted, into the ether between them. He is shaking his head, his lips silently moving, and he closes his eyes.

“I should— I have to report you,” he whispers, his voice full of inner conflict.

“Of course,” Merlin says sarcastically. “I’ve only saved your life a hundred times, and saved the whole of Camelot besides – for that horrible crime, I _should_ be executed, like so many sorcerers before me. I mean, if you’re gonna kill innocent people, why stop at one? Tell you what, Arthur, why don’t we go and get some druid children and drown _them_ , just like your father—” Arthur’s hand is clapped hard against Merlin’s mouth, and Merlin lets out a sharp grunt of pain at the sudden smack of his lips against his teeth, and he shoves back. There’s magic in the strength of his hands as his palms slam against Arthur’s breastplate, and Arthur lets out a grunt as he stumbles back from him, his mouth falling open.

He stares at Merlin, _stares_ at him, and he looks at Merlin as if Merlin is one of the most horrifying things in the world, as if Merlin is some monster to be defeated, and it makes Merlin ache inside. He’s never known how strong Merlin can be with the use of his magic, never realized what a different man Merlin is when he’s permitted the golden warmth that runs in his veins and heats him from within, like a hearth heats a house in winter.

“I wish I could make you understand,” Merlin says in a whisper. “I wish you hadn’t been— I wish you didn’t have your father’s blindness. But my magic isn’t _evil_ , Arthur. It’s… I’d say it was a tool, like any other, but it’s not even that: it’s _part_ of me. If you believe I’m a good man, if you believe that I care for you, then you _know_ I would never hurt anyone with my magic. Never.”

“But it will _corrupt_ you,” Arthur all but shouts at him, his voice full of desperation. “Magic is a corrupting influence, Merlin, and it will make you _evil_. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand why the Old Religion was outlawed in the first place, why my father _had_ to do what he did?”

“I’ve had magic since I was a child,” Merlin says, reaching back and pulling up the latch on the door. “As a little boy, Arthur, I sat by my mother’s heart, and I painted her pictures in the smoke, and that was all it was – a child, trying to make his mother smile. I couldn’t understand why it made her so terrified, so upset, when to me, it was just like drawing pictures in the sand. So many children died, Arthur. Dozens of them, _hundreds_ of them, were drowned for nothing except being _able_ to do magic. You know that, don’t you? You know that it’s— That it’s _part_ of somebody? That you can’t learn to do it unless it’s already _in_ you?” Arthur is staring at him, his mouth moving as if he is a gaping fish in a pond, and Merlin feels so sick he can’t stand it, feels like he might drop dead at any moment… “And, Arthur, it— Without magic, you’d—”

 _You’d never have been born_ , he almost says, and he thinks of all Nimueh had ever said, thinks of the deal Uther made with her to conceive Arthur, and how it killed his mother in her bed, how they thought it was just dying in childbirth, and it wasn’t. A life for a life: that’s how it works, how it must always work, to bring new life into the world, or bring someone from the brink of death.

A life for a life.

“Without magic, I’d what?” Arthur asks, and Merlin scrambles back against the door, shaking his head and almost stumbling as he goes, shaking his head. “I’d what? _Tell me_.”

“No,” Merlin says. “No, I misspoke,” he says, and Arthur wrinkles his nose, _staring_ at him.

“You’re keeping something from me,” he says.

“I usually am,” Merlin replies, and he flees out into the corridor. He doesn’t actually think about where he’s going or where he’s running to, doesn’t think at all. All that is running through his head is that he wants to get away, wants to escape from Arthur calling his name and the way it echoes down the corridor, the way Merlin’s bootsteps slap on the cold stone. He scrambles down a stairwell and then down another, into another, and another still…

Merlin realizes where he is when he comes to a stop at the edge of the great caverns beneath the halls of Camelot, and he stops himself still in his place, slowing to a stop. The Great Dragon is further in the depths of the cave, and Merlin allows himself to sink down onto the floor, cross-legged on the cold stone. He can feel the slight burn in the back of his throat from how far he’d run, and how fast, can feel the speed of his breaths and feel the hard beat of his heart in his chest.

Leaning forward, he rests his elbows against his knees, and he knots his hands in his hair, resting his forehead against his forehead. Wondering where the Dragon is, he hesitates for a long few moments, and then he focuses on the beat of his heart, using it to calm himself, to meditate on the thrum of his magic in his veins, like molten gold that runs in parallel to the red of his blood.

His magic runs from his head down toward his toes, and he feels its quiet thrum, a constant energy always within him, feels it flowing in his blood, feels it layered beneath his skin, feels it in his bones and his heart and behind his eyes, and as he concentrates, he imagines it expanding around him like a cloud of steam. In his mind’s eye, even as he feels the golden sheen of his magic spread across his skin like the pleasant heat of a warm bath, he imagines that steam curling outward, imagines tendrils of it slowly curling out from the platform he rests on and out into the wider area of the cavern.

He’s never actually seen that much of the cavern, especially given that only a little light filters in from the distant edges of the cavern, and he has neglected to bring a torch down with him. As his magic spreads, he maps the cavern with his mind’s eye: the central stone upon which the Dragon always sits, and then deeper, between the pillars, following the chain…

But then he—

Well, doesn’t _see_ him, but he feels the Great Dragon, and can imagine him in his mind’s eye, creeping across the stone floor with his huge body pressed against the stone, his sharp elbows and his horny heels angled up toward the ceiling, like a cat—

Merlin can’t help it.

Maybe it’s the momentary fatigue from his sprint down into the caverns after the exercise in the training grounds, or maybe it’s the stress of dealing with Arthur and his prejudice: maybe it’s the sheer absurdity of it all…

But he bursts into laughter.

It echoes across the cavern, and the Dragon sits up on his heels, hopping into the air and beating his great wings so that he can sink down onto the great stone. He is looking at Merlin with his golden eyes catching the dim light, and Merlin says, “What are you _doing_?”

“Nothing,” the Great Dragon says, sounding the slightest bit miffed, and Merlin looks out into the dim light of the cavern, looking at the Dragon, and he looks out at the air between them. “Why are you here, young warlock?”

Merlin doesn’t know.

He had not been thinking when he’d run here, hadn’t even thought about it, had come here apparently on instinct, but what instinct, Merlin isn’t sure. Certainly not self-preservation.

“I was reading,” he says, to avoid telling the truth, “about a spell— about a spell you can use to walk on air, as if it’s the ground. As if it’s solid.” The Dragon turns his head, leaving some of his face darkened in shadow, and he gives Merlin a very thoughtful look.

“Loki,” he says.

“What?” Merlin leans forward. “Loki, what’s that?”

“He is a god – or he calls himself such, and he comes from a land to the East, across the sea,” the Great Dragon says in a low, amused purr, and he leans back upon his heels, looking at Merlin with great thought. “They call him the Skywalker, for he does as you say – he treats the very air as if it were a grassy embankment, stepping over it with ease and grace, and magic at his heels.”

“Could I do that?” Merlin asks.

“Certainly,” the Dragon says. “If you knew the words to such a spell.”

“I don’t,” Merlin admits.

“I thought as much.”

“Do you?”

“Perhaps.”

“Would you tell them to me, if you did?”

“No.”

“You were going to pounce! Like a _cat_! You were creeping up on me like a—”

“I was training your instincts,” the Dragon says haughtily, giving a shake of his mighty head, and Merlin watches as he comes forward, but then he cranes his head, his mouth falling open. The Dragon’s huge, clawed front feet come gracefully forward, and they settle on the air as if it’s a hard surface just like the stone he crawls from—

“Wow,” Merlin whispers, unable to keep the exhaled word back, and the Dragon chuckles as he sidles closer and closer, until his head is level with Merlin’s place on the stone, and he leans in close. He can feel the Great Dragon’s stiflingly hot breath against him like the heat that comes off the forge, and he had expected the Great Dragon’s breath to smell of meat, but it doesn’t – instead, it smells a little like metal, a coppery tang that hangs thick on the air between them.

The Great Dragon is closer than he’s ever been to Merlin, now, and Merlin’s hand trembles as he slowly raises it, reaching forward to settle his palm against the hard, shield-shaped scale that hardens the tip of the Great Dragon’s snout… And the Great Dragon snaps his teeth, making Merlin let out a yelp of noise and retract his hand: the Great Dragon chuckles, and then leans forward once more, touching the tip of his nose to Merlin’s calves.

Shakily, Merlin laughs too, and he touches his palm to the hard scale, feeling it – he’d expected it to be hot too, like the Dragon’s burningly hot breath, but it isn’t. The scale is just as cool as the stone beneath him, and like this, with the Dragon close enough to touch, with his palm looking so _small_ against the individual scales that cover the Dragon’s face, let alone the huge ones that armour his body, Merlin feels tiny.

How can they both be creatures of magic, made of the same thing, when Merlin is so _tiny_ , and the Great Dragon so— So _great_?

“That’s not funny,” Merlin says.

“It was funny,” the Great Dragon says. “You thought I would eat you.”

“You might have.”

“No.” There’s a kind of shift in the line of the Great Dragon’s mouth – he isn’t capable of smiling, Merlin doesn’t think, on account of his lacking human features with which to do it, but there is a kind of _reptilian smirk_ there. A reptilian smirk seems well within his means.

“How many sorcerers have you known?” Merlin asks.

“Thousands,” the Great Dragon says, and he draws his head slowly back once more, looking down at Merlin with his golden eyes full of quiet mirth.

“What did they call you?” Merlin asks. The Great Dragon’s eyes narrow just slightly, but then he tilts his head.

“They called me by my name,” he says, and then he beats his wings once more, flying back to seat himself on the great rock, and Merlin closes his eyes as the manufactured breeze hits him in the face, drawing over his cheeks. The silence rests between them like an ocean, and Merlin looks down at the stone floor, his lips pressed loosely together: for some unspoken reason, one that he couldn’t even word clearly, let alone lend voice to, he feels that he cannot just ask for the Great Dragon’s name, that for some reason, he hasn’t met the prerequisite conditions, or—

“Why don’t you call me by mine?”

“Merlin?”

“No,” Merlin says. “Other magical people – the druid boy, and… They call me _Emrys_. You don’t do that.”

“You have many names,” the Great Dragon says. “Merlin is but one of them. _Myrddin Wyllt_.”

“I’m not wild,” Merlin objects, and the Dragon chuckles at his indignation. It’s an indulgent chuckle, full of affection, and although Merlin will not soon forget how inhuman the Great Dragon is, how different they are—

It’s…

It’s nice, in a way. Like when Gaius dotes on him, in one way or another. It makes him feel the slightest bit warm inside. Like he belongs here, in Camelot. Arthur used to give him that feeling too.

“Perhaps not from your own perspective, young warlock,” he says lowly, and then he adds, “Ambrose is another. Emrys is but one of dozens of names you might be known by, from one place to the next.”

“Do you have lots of names?” Merlin asks.

“I have only one,” the Great Dragon replies primly. Again, Merlin feels that there’s steps to this dance he doesn’t know, but once more, he feels stuck, and he is quiet, not saying anything more. “Why are you here? It was not to speak of me of magic you have read only in legend.”

“I don’t know,” Merlin says. It’s honest, at least.

“You quarrel with Arthur,” the Great Dragon says sagely. “This shall pass.”

“I nearly told him,” Merlin says. “About— About Nimueh, and his mother. Why she died.”

“Why didn’t you?” the Dragon asks, sounding genuinely _puzzled_ , as if he cannot possibly comprehend why Merlin wouldn’t have just thrown it into Arthur’s face. How can they be made of the same thing, and be so different? Why don’t dragons have _feelings_ like people do?

“It would have been cruel,” Merlin says. “It would have been callous, to do that, I was— We were arguing, and I was trying to explain that magic isn’t a force for evil, and I nearly just spat it out, and that’s the wrong way to do it, if I tell him. To just chuck it at him like another barb in the argument.”

The Dragon looks at him blankly.

“Teach me the Skywalking spell,” Merlin says, and the Dragon’s blank look turns wry.

“Very well,” he says, to Merlin’s complete surprise, and Merlin listens intently as the dragon goes on to speak.


	3. Chapter 3

“Where have you been?” Gaius asks as Merlin enters the room, and for a long second, Merlin stops short, his brain running in overdrive as he tries to think of what lie to come up with, what to say… Gaius is watching him with a slightly amused quirk to his lips, and Merlin swallows.

“Uh— I was… I was practising, you know, with Sir Leon.”

“No,” Gaius says mildly. “I walked by the training grounds, and saw each of the knights at work once more. Arthur said you had run off from him.”

“Yes,” Merlin says. “But then I trained… On my own.” Gaius’ lips quirk further up at their edges, and he smiles, reaching slowly out. His old fingers touch delicately against Merlin’s shoulder, and he rubs it with a gentle movement of a cold palm.

“Merlin,” he murmurs. “I know of the Great Dragon.”

“Oh,” Merlin says. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“ _Oh_.”

“Yes,” Gaius repeats. Merlin takes a step back, drawing his hand through his hair in an awkward movement, and he stares down at the ground, unsure what to say – all this time, then, for over a year, Gaius has known exactly where Merlin has gone when he’s been speaking with the Great Dragon. He’s _known_. “Merlin…” Gaius hesitates, his lips parting as if he isn’t sure if he wants to actually say what he’s about to say, and then he reaches out, delicately touching Merlin’s shoulder. He rubs his palm over the muscle there, which is tired even from the light swordplay he’d been practising. “You are both beings of magic,” he says finally, but Merlin gets the impression this isn’t what he wanted to say, or that it wasn’t what he was _going_ to say. “It is only natural you would be drawn to one another.”

“I vowed I would never speak to him again, after he was willing to let my mother die, with Nimueh,” Merlin mutters, and it feels such a relief to be able to _say_ it to another person, to be able to let that secret loose. Everything he has discussed with the Great Dragon, all that has made him feel small and uncertain and yet _so important_ in the scheme of his destiny, in the scheme of Albion’s existence… “But then he called me, after Arthur— And he didn’t say that he forgave me, but he just called me back. Spoke with me.”

“Mmm hmm,” Gaius says, and Merlin does not doubt that he is listening even as he turns away to focus on something he is putting together on the table, Merlin thinks – based on the smell – some remedy for warts.

“I— I don’t know what brought me there,” he says quietly, his hands loosely behind his back, his steps light on the stone. “But I was… Arthur.”

“You quarrelled?” Gaius asks delicately, careful not to actually look at Merlin’s face. “Leon mentioned he asked that you help him off with his armour, and had the impression that you were to be dressed down somewhat yourself, although for what reason, he had no idea.”

“He was angry, that I would leave Camelot,” Merlin murmurs, and as he speaks he moves forward, taking up two radishes from their jar and beginning to slice them into fine discs. Gaius nods his approval, and sets a bowl close to him so that the radish can be set into the potion in the next few minutes. “He’s worried that if I leave the city, I will go on to learn magic elsewhere. I was angry, and defensive, and I was trying so hard to just explain to him why magic is so good, why it’s so vital, and I nearly _told_ him about Nimueh, and about what Uther did.” Gaius looks up from his work, and Merlin hurriedly says, “I didn’t. It would’ve been… I don’t know why I wanted to do that. It would have been so cruel.”

Gaius’ brows knit together in thought, and he adjusts the flame beneath the vial that is bubbling away before him.

“Perhaps,” he says finally. “But if he is to know of magic, how else will you tell him of what it is, to have magic, to use magic? How will he feel if he knows you have concealed this from him, when the secret of your magic itself has been revealed?” Merlin looks down at the scuffed leather of his boots, and then he focuses on the radishes again, his blade sliding easily through the hard root.

“The Great Dragon said that this is meant to be,” Merlin murmurs. “That it was destined for him to discover my magic, that this was supposed to happen. I wish that destiny was kinder, sometimes.”

“Yes, Merlin,” Gaius murmurs softly. “I as well.”

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

The days pass swiftly by, and Merlin sees neither hair nor hide of Arthur as he goes through his daily life at the castle. Every day, he trains for a few hours with Leon, or with one of the other knights, and every day, he does Gaius’ rounds with him. It’s incredible, how little of Gaius’ craft he had ever picked up before, spending most of his time in the castle proper, but now…

With every week that passes by, Merlin feels more like he actually has a chance of being a healer in his own right. He knows, now, the names of every plant and fungus that Gaius keeps in his rooms, of every strange oddity he keeps in jars or vials or small boxes.

When Gaius asks him to get something, he doesn’t have to hesitate, to clarify what exactly it might be, to ask what it is.

It—

He feels guilty, for finding the work of a physician so boring, before. There is still a monotony to it, that much is true, and he doesn’t know if he will ever enjoy the act of setting out ingredients and making them into tinctures, balms, poultices, or other kinds of medicines, but he actually likes going out into the city and talking with the people, and actually being able to answer their _questions_.

He likes not feeling like an idiot.

He _isn’t_ an idiot.

Even his studies in magic are coming along in leaps and bounds, simply because he has the time to read and to study and to practice in the safety and comfort of his own rooms, and suddenly it seems like the day itself is as long from end to end as one horizon to the other, and Merlin can scarcely believe there are so many hours in a day.

He is grateful. He is grateful, and he is glad, and he is _studious_ where he never was before, and he kicks himself for having gone so long in ignorance.

The people of Camelot, he realizes after two months have passed, are looking at him differently too. It isn’t as if Merlin holds himself differently or presents himself differently: he’s still the same young man with a neckerchief around his neck, in his light clothes and is sometimes shoddy appearance, but… For so long he was a servant, and the servant of the prince, and people knew he was Gaius’ apprentice, yes, but they knew he wasn’t taking it all that seriously, that it wasn’t too important.

But now, Gaius and his teachings, _that’s_ what defines him, not his servitude to Arthur.

He’s—

The people don’t look at him as a young lad, stumbling in the streets and more clumsy than he’d like, don’t think of him as a bumbling idiot or a naïf. They look at him and they see him as a physician-to-be, and people stop him in the street to ask him questions not just about when Gaius will be available, or when he will next be doing his rounds in one borough or other, or to pass on messages to a co-worker within the castle if he’s going that way, but they ask him questions about _healing_.

It doesn’t seem to matter that he doesn’t always know the answer, or that he sometimes says, “I’m sorry, I’d have to ask Gaius,” or, “Well, that’s— God, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to give a simple answer to that, it’s kind of complicated.” It doesn’t matter that he _isn’t_ an expert.

The fact that he _will_ be an expert one day, in the eyes of the people, seems to be enough.

“Why didn’t you tell me to quit?” Merlin asks one day, as he eats his lunch. He sits on the shelf at the edge of the Great Dragon’s cavern as he eats, chewing at his bread, and the Great Dragon watches him with his head tilted slightly to one side. He looks amused, or at least— Honestly, maybe he doesn’t look anything, and maybe Merlin imagines the occasional quirk to the line of his mouth, or the sometimes twinkle in his eyes. Maybe, he thinks, he only _feels_ the dragon’s mood upon the air, on the bond of magic that flows between them like the estuary from one lake to the next, and his brain just fills in the gaps on the Great Dragon’s inhuman features. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The Great Dragon is amused by the question. “If you knew that this was my destiny, that I would one day leave my place as a serving boy, and go back to focusing on my duties as Gaius’ apprentice, why wouldn’t you tell me to quit?”

“You simplify the matter of destiny, young warlock,” the Great Dragon says haughtily, adjusting the set of his wings where they lie flat against his shoulders like a cowl. “Would you have me lead you down the path like a cow on a string?”

“If it brings the destined Albion about faster,” Merlin snaps, “ _Yes_.”

The Great Dragon’s low laughter echoes in the great corridors of the cavern, and Merlin scowls, taking a bite out of his chicken leg, chewing it on it thoughtfully. He waits for the Great Dragon to say something more, but as usual, he doesn’t bother to explain anything: he just laughs at Merlin, and that’s enough for him.

Looking down at his plate, Merlin frowns, and then looks at the Great Dragon.

“What do dragons eat?” he asks, and the Great Dragon hums in thought, his glittering gaze flitting down to the chicken that Merlin holds in his hand, but Merlin doesn’t think he has any especial _want_. He’s never read any hunger in the Great Dragon’s expression or in his words, except a wider hunger for freedom, and for release.

“Magic flows through the air, as blood flows within a body,” the Great Dragon murmurs, and he looks at Merlin with something Merlin thinks is affection, but it’s always hard to be sure. Sometimes, the Great Dragon’s temper is impossible to predict. “Just as you cannot see the flow in your veins, because it his hidden beneath your skin, you cannot see the veins of magic where they flow through the world about you. You feel only where it is drawn forth from some nick or cut, with which to do spellwork, or you feel where a rupture or bruise has interrupted the natural rhythm of things. It is from this almighty flow, young warlock, that a dragon satiates its hunger, its thirst, alike. All beings of magic are capable of this, to some extent, but to the dragon, it is absolute: I require no other libation to sustain me. Magic is enough.”

Merlin looks down at his plate, and then he glances up again, meeting the Great Dragon’s gaze. “All beings of magic?” he repeats. “Even sorcerers?”

The Great Dragon does not smile.

Merlin is certain of it, at this point: it is his own imagination that lends a curve to the shift of the Dragon’s mouth, and makes a smile out of the crescent of his open mouth, his sharp teeth. He isn’t really smiling – Merlin just _feels_ that he is pleased, and ascribes an expression to his face.

( _The Great Dragon smiles. Merlin smiles back.)_

“Is it rude?” Merlin asks, just before he leaves. “To ask a dragon their name?”

“No,” the Great Dragon says.

“Then will you tell me yours?” The Great Dragon regards him for a long, long few moments.

“No,” he decides.

“What would you do,” Merlin asks, “if I were to set you free? Would you attack Camelot… The king?” The Great Dragon stares at him, his face completely expressionless, and Merlin wonders how it might be possible for him to guard his feelings like that, to leave the air empty between them, where Merlin can sense absolutely nothing of his feelings. “I couldn’t set you free, old friend. Knowing you might do that.”

“Then how could you?” the Great Dragon replies, and although Merlin senses no emotion radiating from his hard scales, he detects the slightest hint of iciness to his tone.

“If you were to promise me,” Merlin says. “If you were to vow to harm nobody, then I would do all in my power to release you. But you understand, don’t you, why I can’t let you free, if I think you might hurt somebody, even if it’s in the path of somebody who deserves to— Who deserves your anger? You understand why I couldn’t set you free, so that you could do harm to others?” The Great Dragon leans his head back slightly, and Merlin almost imagines he can see the flames that burn within him shining through the golden glow of his eyes, like the reflection of a hearth in a polished plate.

“And what of my people?” the Great Dragon asks in a low rumble that shakes some of the outcrops of rock around them, and makes Merlin slightly unsteady on his feet. “What of my brothers and sisters, all slain in Uther’s onslaught? What of every sorcerer who has ever died at his hand, babes drowned in ponds and wells, women raped and called witch by his soldiers, men slaughtered in their thousands? What of the Dragonlords?”

 _What are Dragonlords?_ Merlin almost responds, but he holds his tongue.

“They’re already dead,” Merlin says, softly. “And you can’t bring back the dead by sowing fresh blood on their graves.”

The Great Dragon sets his mighty jaw, and he leans his head back slightly, turning it to the side and away from Merlin. Without saying another word, his wingbeats fill the silence between them, and he flies farther into the depths of the cavern, and away from him.

Merlin trudges up the stairs.

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

 “This bacon tastes different to usual,” Merlin says conversationally.

“Mmm,” Gaius says. “George is experimenting with a new cure, which calls for honey.”

“It’s sweet,” Merlin says, and Gaius nods his head, moving to take a sip of his water. “What are Dragonlords?” Gaius chokes, and he splutters messily, his eyes watering as he coughs hard against the wizened flesh at his wrist. Merlin watches him, his eyebrows slightly raised, as Gaius takes a long gulp of water to soothe his throat, and then turns his gaze on Merlin.

“Did the Great Dragon mention this to you?”

“Today,” Merlin says.

“Right,” Gaius says. “The Dragonlords were… During the Great Purge, toward the end, Uther had them all rounded up, and slaughtered them in their dozens. The Dragonlords, it is said, were the only men and women who could commune with dragons. Speak to them, in their ancient tongue – command them, even, and bend them to their wills.” Merlin watches Gaius’ face for a long moment, trying to figure out why exactly _that_ might make Gaius choke on his drink, and he frowns deeply. Gaius must work out why Merlin is staring at him so intently, and he says quietly, “Ah— I once knew a Dragonlord, that is all. Balinor.”

“He died in the Great Purge?” Merlin asks, and Gaius hesitates for just a moment.

“No,” Gaius says. “No, he— He didn’t. I last heard that he was some ways away, the next kingdom over, in Cenred’s lands. He was forced to flee, in the aftermath of the Great Purge twenty years ago, and that was the last I heard of him. For all I know, he is long-since dead. It was he who— Uther told him, Balinor, that he had seen the error of his ways. That he could see the true grief, the horror, in the Great Dragon being the last of his kind, and he beseeched that Balinor should help him, by bringing the Great Dragon to Camelot. I suspect – although Uther has never said this to me – that he was tortured preceding his—” Gaius stops again, and he exhales quietly. “In any case, Uther betrayed them both. He did not kill the Great Dragon, that much is true, but he bound him in chains beneath the walls of Camelot, and Balinor, he chased with soldiers on horseback, with dogs at his heels. T’was only luck and the kindness of strangers that allowed him the escape he made.”

Taking up his mug, Merlin takes a long drink of his tea, tasting it on his tongue and feeling the warm flow of it into his throat.

“That must be a horrible thing,” Merlin murmurs, struck by the horrible tragedy of it all, and with yet another of Uther’s injustices settling on his shoulders like yet another weight. “To be the last of your kind, to have seen all your kin slaughtered before you, and then to be— Not even _complicit_ , but to have brought about your brother’s imprisonment… That’s a torture in itself.” He sets down his mug, and he pushes away his plate.

“You should eat something more,” Gaius murmurs. “A slice of bacon is hardly substantial.”

“I’m not hungry,” Merlin murmurs, and he locks himself in his own room to study.

☩ ♕ ☩ ♕ ☩

“Merlin,” says a voice behind him in the square the next day, and Merlin turns to meet Morgana’s gaze. She looks tired, as of late, and although Merlin can see she’s put powder on her face to hide them, there are dark grey bags under her eyes, leaving them in shadow. She’s lost some weight, too, he thinks, because her cheekbones are ever more pronounced, and although she smiles at him, she does so weakly.

“Morgana,” Merlin says, reaching out and gently touching her forearm with a brush of his fingers. Her smile widens, and Merlin glances from her to Guinevere, who stands at her shoulder.

“We miss you about the palace,” Morgana murmurs, reaching out and adjusting the set of Merlin’s neckerchief around his neck. “Don’t we, Gwen?”

“We do,” Gwen admits, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. “Arthur’s new serving boy is named George, and— Well, um.” Gwen hesitates, her lips quirking into a slightly awkward smile. “He’s nice.”

“He’s ever so boring,” Morgana says, cutting to the quick where Gwen is too predisposed to kindness. Morgana shakes her head slightly, and she hides a yawn behind a delicate hand. How bad must her nightmares be, in recent weeks, if she’s asleep on her feet just for walking around the market stalls, seeing their wares? “All he thinks about is cleaning and serving Arthur, and it makes for very bad conversation, as you might imagine.”

Merlin chuckles ruefully, and as Morgana turns her head away, she yawns again: Merlin catches Gwen’s gaze, and the two of them share a concerned glance. Shifting his position, Merlin offers Morgana his elbow, and for a moment, she looks surprised, but then she takes it, leaning on him slightly as they walk in the direction of the castle. She is cooler to the touch than he’d expected, but he doesn’t complain or shy away from her.

This is different, too, he supposes.

Were he still a serving boy, this would never have been _allowed_ , let alone here in public, where everybody can see them, but he _isn’t_ a serving boy. He isn’t a lord or a knight, no, but he’s the apprentice to the physician, and will one day serve on the court in his own right, when he takes over from Gaius’ position—

Merlin glances to Gwen, who is walking slightly behind them, and then he says, “I’m sure Arthur is pleased, though. To have a serving boy who isn’t stretched as thin.”

“Oh, no,” Morgana says, moving her index finger in a gently scolding manner. “No, no, when he isn’t _sulking_ at all hours of the day, he complains about George and finds fault with all the things that, to anybody else’s eye, he’s doing completely perfectly.”

“And how are you?” Merlin asks. Morgana laughs quietly, glancing to meet his gaze with hers.

“That was very well done,” Morgana murmurs, her voice full of praise, and then she says, “Gaius has been teaching you his bedside manner as well as his craft, I take it?” Merlin chuckles quietly, and Morgana exhales, dipping her head forward slightly so that some of her hair hides her face. “The nightmares plague me. Even with Gaius’ remedies, still they come, interrupting my sleep… There are nights when I wake screaming. Too many nights of a week.”

“I’m sorry,” Merlin murmurs, because he can think of nothing else to say. Morgana gently pats his arm, her fingers gentle against the fabric of his sleeve.

“It’s alright,” she murmurs. “They must end, soon.” Merlin suspects that they will not. If Morgana really is a sorcerer, then the nightmares are maybe the sign of something to come, or even just the by-product of her not using her magic. What must that be like, to be so unaware of your magic that you don’t even realize it thrums in your veins, and in the air around you? What must it be like, to feel some energy within you, crackling like the thick air before a thunderstorm, and with no idea as to how to set it free? “They have to.”

The desperate hope in her voice makes Merlin’s heart pang, and he doesn’t break away from her at the entrance into the main castle like he’d been planning to: instead, he walks slowly alongside her, into the main square before the castle. A few of the guards glance at him curiously, evidently surprised to see the Lady Morgana on his arm, but none of them comment on it, and Merlin walks with Morgana all the way to the steps of the palace, coming to a gentle stop and supporting her as she takes a few steps up the stairs.

“Thank you for the walk, Merlin,” Morgana says, with a small nod of her head. “It’s important to me, to have a friend such as you. You know, who isn’t all _my lady_ and all that.”

“It’s no hardship, my lady,” Merlin murmurs in his most ridiculous parody of  a noble’s voice, and he gives a ridiculously low bow of his head. He smiles when Morgana laughs like a peal of bells, and bows back, equally lowly. She rushes up toward the doors with a little more of a spring in her step, and as Gwen passes him by, she mouths, _Thank you_ , at him.

Merlin smiles as he comes away from the castle.

“Were you just walking with Morgana?” Uther demands as he enters the courtyard, and Merlin stops short, surprised to be face to face with the king. He must have been walking behind them, and Merlin’s lips part in surprise.

“She was a little faint in the market, sire,” he lies smoothly, with a bow of his head that is far too polite to be parody. “I wanted to make sure she made it safely to the palace.” Uther’s vaguely irritated expression changes, fading slightly, and once more he gives Merlin one of those appraising looks that he’d never been on the end of as a serving boy, but seems to be getting more and more of as a (vaguely competent) physician’s apprentice. The look is _shrewd_ , concentrated, and Merlin stands still as Uther takes a step to the side, looking Merlin up and down as if searching for something in the set of his shoulders or his hips.

“You’ve put on some muscle,” he says approvingly.

“Yes, sire,” Merlin says. “Gaius has me training with Sir Leon, sir. In another month or so, I’ll be making regular rounds of the villages outside of the city, serving as physician for those villages without healers or an experienced alderman. I’ll be able to learn, too, from the villages that _do_ have physicians, and help lighten their loads.”

“Very good,” Uther murmurs, and his gloved fingers brush against his chin as he nods slightly. His gaze is still flitting back and forth from Merlin’s head down to his feet, and Merlin glances at him uncertainly.

“Sire?” he asks.

“Morgana likes you,” Uther says.

“I consider her a dear friend, sire,” Merlin says. “I only wish I could better heal her ailments.” This seems to be the right answer, because Uther smiles warmly, and he gives a nod of his head before sailing past Merlin with not a care in the world, two guards flanking him. Merlin watches after him, and he wonders if Uther ever feels any guilt for all he has done, because it never shows in him, not really, and Merlin can’t comprehend how it must be to be able to be so callous, so cold and so cruel, and to never feel bad about it. After all, _Merlin_ is uncomfortable even with the animals Arthur kills when he’s hunting, but to kill as many people as Uther has, and feel nothing—

He sees Arthur entering through the arch on horseback, just coming in from a ride, and he exhales.

“God,” he mutters under his breath. “It’s like a royal parade.”

“Merlin,” he says, pausing for a moment as he looks down at him.

“Your highness,” Merlin says, doing his third and most honest bow of the last five minutes. Arthur hesitates for a second before pulling down slightly on his horse’s reins, bringing it to a gentle stop, and then he looks down at him more seriously, very thoughtfully. He glances back to the riding party, which is hovering around the arch as they awkwardly meander in, and then he leans down slightly. To steady him, Merlin sets his hand on the horse’s bridle, as he has done a thousand times before, a hundred thousand—

“Meet me tonight,” Arthur says quietly. “After midnight, outside of the castle walls, next to that brook just inside the closest glade.” Merlin frowns slightly, and he searches Arthur’s face, which is quietly serious, and focused on his own.

“Yes,” he says. “Okay, if you— What’s it about?”

“See you, Merlin,” Arthur says loudly, and Merlin releases his hold on the horse’s bridle, letting him move closer to the edge of the courtyard where George is rushing to help unhorse him.

After midnight, by the brook…

 _All will be well,_ the Great Dragon had said. _All will be well_.

**Author's Note:**

> [Hit me up on Tumblr](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/faq). Requests always open.
> 
> I've never written for BBC Merlin in a serious way before, so I would love feedback. Please comment! :)


End file.
